Or more generally, those most able to afford a big ticket item may be just as likely to dress down, because they feel no need to put on airs and don’t want to attract unwanted attention.
All true; however keep in mind that walking about town with that Vacheron Constantin and bright yellow Lamborghini tends to draw attention.
While wandering around some of the poshest parts of London following at ‘Art gallery trail’, the staff at the jewellery shops between the art galleries looked you up and down as you passed their shop. I was a bit puzzled and annoyed by this until I read in the paper that there had been a spate of robberies targetting jewellery and high end fashion boutiques. That accounted for the smartly dressed, rather thick set men with no necks wearing with little headsets.
I am sure when there is robbery, it sets the shop owners nerves on edge for the whole street and they up their security.
So maybe not just snobbery.
Funny video of a woman who goes to jewelry store, puts it on, then runs to a mirror to look.
Many years ago we traveled to the Burgundy region of France. We’re Californians, so we had done a lot of wine-tasting in our own grape-growing regions.
We tried to do the same sort of casual California drop-ins at some of the world-famous vineyards in Pommard and Puligny-Montrachet, and we were rebuffed in the true French fashion, with shrugs and sniffs and eye-rolls. I guess they sized us up pretty quickly as declassee American tourists.
Quickly accessing a potential customer is an art, one any good salesdroid masters.
My local McLaren/Bentley/Lamborghini dealer is very good. 95% or more people wandering in are not in the market but they all get polite and welcoming treatment.
I like having a chat whilst looking whistfully at the cars. Talking to one salesdroid we got onto the topic of price structures. I suggested that the important point was that no matter who the customer was, the salesdroid’s job was to ensure that there was no money left to be had from that customer. If someone comes in with $700k thinking about a nice car, the salesdroid has failed if the customer drives away in a $500k car. This is true in nearly every luxury category, and even simple goods. One of the best I came across was when buying an electric razor. She was a delight, running me up and down the range and skilfully swapping tack as she narrowed what I was prepared to pay and matching a product. If you weren’t watching for it you would have missed how artful she was. Smooth as silk.
Shops that fail in this art just don’t do as well. Basic politeness is a good start. Car dealers however don’t always work on this model. Many depend on predatory tactics to screw the customer over. Same goal, but involves a mindset that is not usually consistent with politeness or empathy.
This, exactly. I collect rare books, and when I meet with my bookseller, which I always do by appointment, we often confer in a “private viewing area,” which is locked to the general public. And yes, a few members of the public have attempted to gain access, as they see us through the windows. But they cannot.
I’ve never been offered a cappucino or glass of champagne, but I have been able to look at and handle books that are worth thousands. As a collector, I know how to touch them and to handle them, and how to read and understand the reverse title page, and know about deckle edges and the effect of “foxing.” And I typically make a decision on a book in that private room. Not on the spot, of course, I need a few days to think; but my bookseller is more than accommodating in that regard. And I make another appointment, and we go back to the private room to discuss and negotiate.
Regardless, I would not want any liquids (cappucino, espresso) present in that room. Spills would render books worth thousands into messes of soggy paper.
But the “special viewing area” is a thing. I know exactly what it’s for and why it’s there, and frankly, I like it. For an hour, I feel like a VIP, instead of an everyday schlub.
I collect coins. I’m well-known at the couple of serious coin shops in driving distance.
Coin shops deal with collectors at all levels, from kids putting together Mercury dime books, to people looking for rare coins in the $10,000 range.
Most coin dealers also buy jewelry, and may have very expensive pieces in the store.
I’m a mid-range buyer.
They know me, though, and when they have just gotten in something rare and unusual that they know I’m not on the market for, they still want to show it to me when I come in, because they know I’ll enjoy seeing it. They just hand it over to me.
You have to understand-- any shop like this buzzes people in and out.
If they know you, they hit the switch as soon as they recognize you, but if they don’t, someone comes out to check an ID, and take a picture of it with their phone (if you don’t like it, you don’t have to be a customer), and make sure you don’t have a weapon. If you do have one, they ask you to please secure it in your car before entering the store.
So, no one comes in with a weapon, and no one can just run off with something, because you have to be buzzed out.
The front counters are a maze, and the manager has a side arm (the license for it is framed and displayed), so going out the backdoor is not possible. It’s alarmed, anyway.
If someone would try to pocket something smaller, and get themselves buzzed out with it, and they realized it after the fact, they have three cameras, and you are either a regular, or they have a photo of your ID.
This is why they feel safe letting you examine things close up. They certainly don’t expect to sell you a $10,000 gold eagle you have looked at closely.
More likely it’s just that they don’t do drop-ins, and you didn’t have an appointment. I live in Europe and have visited wineries from Portugal to Croatia, and with very few exceptions the really good ones expect you to contact them and book your visit ahead of time. Wine culture in Europe is very different compared to California.
You’d think if the place rejected all but those who booked in advance they would have some mechanism to stop drop-ins. Catch them at the gate to the property and turn them away. Or, have a drop-in visitor center where they can buy bottles but get no further.
Anything other than the cold-shoulder treatment.
Why? If there’s no culture of dropping in, there won’t be any drop-ins to stop.
I live in Western Australia, where many wineries do cellar-door sales (and for some smaller wineries it’s a non-trivial proportion of their sales). But the hours and days where this is done are prominently posted at the entrance to the property; if nothing is posted then there’s no cellar door sales and you don’t go in. If you do, you can expect to be turned away.
You’re thinking like an American, where everything is oriented around putting a sales-friendly face forward to potential customers at all times. The wine culture here is simply not like that.
Extended discussion on this point would be a hijack of the thread, so I’ll leave it there.
South Africa is like California, I’m guessing. I would hate to do wine-routing in Europe, some of my favourite wines are from spur-of-the-moment decisions while just driving in the country. And I’m talking wines that are quite expensive by our standards.
My wife and I (long ago!!) were shopping for her engagement ring. (I’m not silly enough to not involve her in searching for something she’d have to wear). We looked at a few other stores, and then went into Tiffany’s in Toronto. (She totally fell for it - “oh, look, we happen to be passing Tiffany’s. Want to look in here too?”) We walked in wearing casual clothes, and it was blistering hot out, so I was sweating like a pig. The lady was really nice, and even though we were obviously in the market for something substantially less expensive, she spent a good deal of time with us and let my wife see what her finger looked like with a $90,000 ring on it. We ended up buying the ring there (not that one, though). My logic was - a diamond is a diamond, but when she’s talking about it or showing it off, it means a lot more to say “it’s from Tiffany;s” than “this is from People’s Jewelers”. Or as I liked to say at the time,
you can either say ‘I got my ring same place as Jackie Onassis shops’ or ‘I got my ring from Birk’s, same place as Mila Mulroney shops’." I got our wedding rings from Tiffany’s in NYC for the same brand snobbery reason.
Funny thing, I went back into the store to get the wife some earrings about 3 years later, and the same sales lady even remembered my name as soon as I walked in.
My wife has the similar complaint. She was a shift supervisor at a local fast food place her last year of high school, and had saved up enough money, had decent income, wanted to buy a car to replace the old ****box she got from her parents. The local Nissan dealership wouldn’t give her the time of day, ignored her. The Acura dealer was very nice, let her take it for a test drive for the afternoon, etc. She bought a sporty little model, then went back in it to tell off the Nissan salesman.
Similar story here in Canada - I heard the story of a dealership out west; a not well-dressed native couple went into a dealership looking at trucks. The sales staff figured they were a waste of time, sent the junior salesman out to take care of them. He sold them have a dozen high end pickup trucks. They’d won $50M on the lottery a while before, and were buying a new truck for assorted friends and family. Pretty good commission for the sales guy.
And should your son actually be in the market for a Lambo someday, and that dealership is still in business, there’s a reasonable chance he’ll buy his car from them even if he has to travel a bit farther to get there.
I was thinking that with high-end auto dealers, it may not be just the initial sale they are after. If you like them and feel they treated you fairly you will be more likely to go back to that dealer when it’s time to trade up. Also, you may well be more likely to use them to service your car, and I suspect the high-end places are similar to the middle-range dealers in that a lot of their profit comes from parts and service.
In California, some schlulb looking person in old clothes could easily be a tech multimillionaire. It would be a very bad idea to write anyone off, especially if they are the only customer around anyway.
I think salesmen are very good at sizing up customers. In 2007, I walked into a Honda dealership, prepared to buy one of their newly minted Fits. The car I drove up in was 17 years old. I would have been wearing a flannel shirt and jeans, since that is what I always wear. Nonetheless, when I actually got down to buying, he said he assumed I was paying cash. How did he figure that out. He was right, of course.
I can see that; the car you’re driving is almost two decades old, so you’re frugal and have had years to accumulate the money for a cash purchase (of the least expensive Honda vehicle).
BTW, no insult intended; I bought a Honda Fit to replace a 16-year-old Honda Accord, and I paid cash for the Fit, though I sprung for the top-of-the-line sport model.
Incidentally, the best salesman I ever dealt with sold me my Fit. He knew I wanted a teeny manual transmission FWD car that got good mileage and was fun to drive - the Fit was the best of that lot unless I wanted to go back to the weird, fashionable nightmare of a MINI. But he didn’t have any manual transmission models of the baseline model I actually wanted. My willingness to walk from the lot got him to actually bring his manager (or someone who was presenting themselves as such) out and sell me the next highest spec at a midpoint between the price of it and the model I wanted. That simply made me happy with the cost of the nicer wheels and the sunroof, I assume they made some money on the deal, either way. He was a good salesman in other ways, too. If he saw me at the dealership for whatever reason, he made a point of talking to me and remembering my name and made small talk in the least salesman way possible. I am horrible with names, but as a result of his being a excellent salesman, I still remember his. I haven’t bought another Honda recently, but if I do consider it, I’ll go looking for him.
The only high end thing I’ve ever been exposed to would be the weirder, rarer guitars out there. In that arena, it really kind of depends on the shop. I’ve had some who were all about getting you to try out this 15-20K guitar in the interest of a sale (I politely declined, I’d probably drop it), and others who want to run your credit card before you touch their 5K collectibles (still far more than I have paid for one).
The one method that will work is to ask as about a model and simply take off a watch that is stupidly expensive. Not only did will they show you anything you were interested but also more often than not would get you in the back room with cappuccino or wine as @Wrenching_Spanners mentioned, but that’s not what the OP is looking for.
Watches are something that if you aren’t interested in them, it’s not really meaningful to spend a lot of time looking at or trying on. When I was in Japan, a lot of my customers were really into middle and high end watches so I got to know a lot about them, and even picked up a few that I liked, but it’s not really a hobby for most people.